


From the Words You Spoke (we built a house)

by twilightstargazer



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, F/M, Fluff, Mild Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-17
Updated: 2016-02-17
Packaged: 2018-05-21 05:15:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6039667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twilightstargazer/pseuds/twilightstargazer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Jesus Christ, Octavia,” he mutters, scrubbing a hand across his face. “Usually before you start leasing a place for rent you tend to ask the owner if it’s okay.”</p><p>“-God, I’m not stupid. Clarke just asked if I knew anyone in need of a roommate and I mentioned you-”</p><p>“Wait, Clarke,” he says, eyes going wide and spine stiffening, “Why the hell did you think it was a good idea to tell Clarke I need a roommate?”</p><p>or, the one where Clarke and Bellamy become roommates, despite their strange past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From the Words You Spoke (we built a house)

It’s all Octavia’s fault if he has to place blame somewhere.

When she decided to finally move out to go live with her boyfriend of three years, he took it with a grain of salt, but was mostly supportive. He helped her pack all of her things, and spent an entire Saturday traversing five flights of stairs with heavy boxes because the elevator in Lincoln’s complex was broken, with only mild complaining.

The first week after she left he felt like a ghost, wandering aimlessly around his apartment with nothing much to do. It was too quiet without her blasting top 40 hits from her bedroom, too organised since there was no one left to leave the cereal on the counter and just too- _different_. With a start, he realises that it’s because he’s lonely.

He thinks about putting out an ad for a roommate, but when he suggests this to Octavia she simply throws her head back and laughs.

“You’re far too prickly to ever get along with a roommate,” she snorts before shovelling a piece of frittata in her mouth. They had been doing brunch at her and Lincoln’s apartment every weekend since she’s left. Normally Bellamy would find the whole concept of brunch terribly pretentious, but Octavia refuses to wake up before at least ten on a Saturday so brunch it is.

(It also helps that his sister’s boyfriend is a fantastic cook whose eggs Benedict is to die for and likes to make them _muffins_ from _scratch_.)

“I’m not prickly,” he grumbles as he swipes a strawberry from her plate, “Just selective.”

That earns him another snort. “Right. Selective,” she says flatly. “Look if you’re lonely or whatever then get a dog or something. They’re much more likely to put up with a nerd who goes to bed at eleven on Fridays and translates Latin prose for fun.”

He makes a face and throws the top of the strawberry at her but doesn’t mention the topic of roommates for the rest of their meal.

Honestly, he doesn’t really need a roommate. He makes rent just fine, his job at the museum paying far better than all three of the ones he had while trying to put Octavia through college. So he drops it for the time being, and starts to try getting accustomed to cooking for one instead.

He doesn’t bring it up to Octavia again, and after the first month he got a bit of a routine down. He works Monday to Friday at the museum, has brunch with Octavia and Lincoln in their apartment on Saturdays and then spends Sundays milling about in his own apartment, catching up on chores and watching Netflix in his pyjamas.

It’s not really much of a life, but it works for him.

Meanwhile Octavia likes to laugh at him for it.

(Sometimes he actually considers getting a dog just so he’ll have something else to do other than marathon Ancient Aliens.)

So yeah, he’s doing just fine, so he’s understandably thrown for a loop when, in the middle of a brunch a couple months down the line, Octavia asks, “So do you still want a roommate?”

Bellamy pauses, the hand holding his cup of coffee freezing in mid air. “What.”

“A roommate? Someone to take the spare room in the apartment?” Octavia prompts, “Come on Bell.”

“I know what a roommate is, Octavia,” he rolls his eyes. “I just don’t get why you’re-” he pauses for a moment and let’s his mind catch up with his words. Bellamy narrows his eyes at her before biting out, “What did you do?”

She holds up her hands, trying to placate him. “I didn’t do anything! I just mentioned it to a friend who’s moving here-”

“Jesus Christ, Octavia,” he mutters, scrubbing a hand across his face. “Usually before you start leasing a place for rent you tend to ask the owner if it’s okay.”

“Would you stop being a drama queen for just a moment,” she huff, slamming her glass of juice down on table hard enough that Lincoln glances out of the kitchen where he’s cleaning up. He’s never joined them for brunch, partly because Octavia mandated it be Blakes only but mostly because three to four arguments always tend to crop up over the course of the meal. “I didn’t lease it, god, I’m not stupid. Clarke just asked if I knew anyone in need of a roommate and I mentioned you-”

“Wait, Clarke,” he says, eyes going wide and spine stiffening, “Why the hell did you think it was a good idea to tell Clarke I need a roommate. I didn’t even know you still _talked_ to Clarke.”

She kicks him under the table. “Of course I still talk to Clarke, you big dummy. She’s still my friend even though we don’t see each other that much anymore.” She rolls her eyes, “God, Bell, just because you suck at human interaction and can’t make friends doesn’t mean we all do.”

“I have friends.”

“Miller doesn’t count.”

“There’s also Murphy.”

Octavia makes a disgusted sound in the back of her throat. “I’m going to end up suffocating you in Lincoln’s soufflé and you’ll have no one but yourself to blame for it. Is that really how you want to die?”

He glares at her without any real heat behind it and she simply smiles sweetly back at him. “Now as I was saying, Clarke’s moving down here next month and she just asked if I happened to anyone with a spare room. I didn’t tell her to just come and move in when it struck her fancy, Bell; I said I would run it by you first.”

Bellamy pinches the bridge of his nose and sags in his chair. “And why the hell do you think having her move in with me would be a good idea?”

Octavia slides the onions from her plate onto his before she says, “Because you need someone who doesn’t put up with your shit, and, deny it all you want, you two could actually be friends if you both weren’t this stubborn.”

He crosses his arms and grumbles nonsensically under his breath, but doesn’t exactly refute her statement.

Ideally, Bellamy knows that he and Clarke could have been friends while Octavia still lived with her. He knows that while they tend to disagree on most little things, they are remarkably similar at times. And he knows that all this still would have been possible if they hadn’t hooked up a few weeks before Octavia graduated and left to come back to live with him, effectively fucking up whatever little relationship they had in the first place.

His sister is still looking at him imploringly, eyes wide and mouth set in a small pout and he feels the last of his resolve crumble away. Sinking down even further in his chair, Bellamy tugs a hand through his wayward curls and mumbles, “When is she coming?”

The grin Octavia gives him in response is radiant and Bellamy already begins to regret this.

* * *

 

Octavia shared an apartment with Clarke Griffin- along with three other girls- for the better part of two years while she was in college. She was a year older than his sister, and whenever Octavia mentioned her to him, she made sure to enunciate just how responsible and put together she was.

(“Almost as neurotic as you are, Bell,” his sister told him once, voice laced with fond amusement.)

Of course, then he actually met Clarke and had to revise his whole opinion of her which immediately changed from _fairly okay_ to _spoilt princess_ the moment she opened the door of her apartment to let him in.

It started with the small things, like the way she always seemed aloof and above it all, how she seemed almost incapable of smiling, and the expensive as fuck beer she kept stocked in the fridge. He’s not sure why the fact that she was always put together got under his skin, but it did, and it doesn’t help that he’s painfully aware of how attractive she is either. Then he found out she owned the apartment- a barely legal junior in college owning a fucking three bedroom apartment- and that’s how things started with them.

Bellamy doesn’t quite remember what exactly happened, but he does know that he might have started it with a not so subtle dig at her, but she is the one who replied with a bitchy comment so he determines that it’s both their faults. Besides, he’s not one to back down from a confrontation like that, something the bright eyed blonde seemed particularly eager for.

Meanwhile Octavia started banging her head against the table they were sat around as he and her new roommate went at it and only intervened when Clarke was about ready to throw her good china at his head.

That was the entirety of their relationship the whole time Octavia was living with her. He cut down on the number of visits he made to see her because living in an actual apartment meant having actual, non shitty wifi, plus they got to Skype a lot often now. However, he and Clarke still argued whenever their paths crossed no matter what, with him hissing ‘Princess’ more than her actual name and her flinging cutting insults right back, though by then her roommates learnt to put up with it.

(Of course, she’s also the one he called when he got a throat infection and didn’t want to worry Octavia, and he’s the one she called when she accidentally almost set her kitchen on fire trying to make stir fry. They don’t mention it to other people, nor do they read into it.)

It wasn’t until Octavia was set to graduate that he came to the realisation that he liked Clarke the most out of all her flatmates. It came during the annual ‘finals can suck it’ night out that Clarke organised for them while she was leaning into his side. Usually it was just her and her roommates but Bellamy was in town for the weekend anyway, as a surprise for his sister, so Clarke dragged him along too.

With a jolt, he realised that he never saw her let loose like this before. Drunk Clarke was endearing in more ways than one, but he found himself liking the way she draped herself all over his person more than he possibly should. (He blamed in on the fact that he’d been drinking too.)

He barely paid any attention that, over the course of the night, she gravitated towards him more and more, hooking her arm through hers and placing her hand on his chest as she threw her head back and laughed at whatever witty thing he said. And he basically encouraged it when she pressed her face against his shoulder or nuzzled his neck, choosing instead to smirk at her and indulge himself in a few not so casual touches.

All in all, he had no one but himself to blame when she finally pushed him against the wall and sealed her mouth over his in a messy kiss that’s all teeth and tongue. It was messy and sloppy and he pulled her flush against him, moulding her softness to his hard planes. She sucked his bottom lip into her mouth, biting down on it, and Bellamy groaned, his hands flexing against her hips. He plucked one kiss from her lips before pulling away, breathing hard.

“Bellamy,” she whispered, low and husky, barely discernible through the heavy bass playing in the club. Her lipstick is smudged and when she looked up at him, he saw that her irises had been reduced to nothing but a thin line of blue around her pupil. It sent a thrill through him and something started to coil deep in his stomach, hot and heavy, and god, he wanted to kiss her again.

Instead, he stepped back and took a deep breath to try and clear his head. “You don’t want this Clarke,” he said, looking down at her, “You’re drunk and-”

“Bellamy,” she sighed again, sneaking her hand underneath the soft material of his T-shirt to scratch her nails against his stomach, “Shut up. I’m still coherent enough to know that I want this.”

When she scratched her nails against his skin again- this time dangerously close to the lip of his jeans- he bent down and kissed her hard, reversing their positions so that she was now pinned to the wall instead. One of her hands immediately tangled itself in his air, changing the angle of the kiss so she could lick inside his mouth, while the other hooked around a belt loop so she could pull him close and grind their hips together.

He’s lucky it was dark and that the crowd was thick enough that her friends didn’t notice them, but when she purposefully grinded down on his knee, his mouth slipped from hers and he swore against her jaw when she does it again, whimpering slightly at the friction. Bellamy doesn’t quite know how they managed to break away from the throngs of people, but he does remember pressing his hand against her mouth to muffle her moans as he grinded into her sinfully slow in the handicapped stall of the bathroom.

She gathered her bearings quicker than he did, taking the initiative to start cleaning them both up. When he finally started coming down from his high, she’d already righted her clothes and, a few seconds later, was giving him a chaste kiss before ducking out of the stall and leaving him standing there with his pants pushed down his thighs.

They didn’t see each other again for the rest of the weekend, and when he did see her again, it was when Octavia was graduating and she was helping move her stuff into the bed of his pickup. She didn’t mention anything about their time together at the club, and neither did he. It felt as though nothing had really changed between them, the two still bickered over petty things as they lugged boxes back and forth, and when it was time to leave, she even gave him a hug, after releasing Octavia from the near chokehold she had her in.

The last time he saw Clarke was in the rear view mirror of his truck, waving as they drove out of sight. He knew that she and Octavia had met up a handful of times in addition to constantly messaging each other, but he didn’t hear from her, aside from some nondescript Christmas and New Years’ texts each year. He didn’t mind. She was Octavia’s friend and it would be weird for them to hang out on their own, even if they’ve hooked up before.

* * *

 

He lets Octavia take the reigns on this, and she’s happy to flit between him and Clarke, working out whatever problems they might come across. He suspects that she wouldn’t be nearly as accommodating if it was anyone but Clarke, but keeps that thought to himself.

She doesn’t know what happened between him and Clarke, and frankly he would love if she never found out. Bellamy knows that if she found out, she would have kicked his ass a long time ago.

There isn’t that much to do in the few weeks before she’s due to arrive. After Octavia told her that he said yes, Clarke asked if it was okay for her to move in a bit earlier than expected since she was living on her friend’s couch. That fact in particular raised a number of questions but he lets it go and merely shrugs when it’s brought up, saying, “Whatever the hell she wants.”

It doesn’t change the fact that he’s still thrown a bit when she shows up, bulky suitcase in hand, more than an hour early.

She doesn’t seem to have changed much in the two years and a half that he hasn’t seen her; still bright eyed and blonde, wearing leggings and an oversized sweatshirt with battered sneakers as she smiles tentatively up at him.

“Hi Bellamy,” she says, a bit breathless.

He blinks stupidly a few times and tries to clear his head before he realises that he’s standing in front a still very much put together Clarke Griffin while sporting a severe case of bed head, glasses perched crookedly on his nose and eating multigrain cereal out of a mug in his pyjamas.

(He’s always had a knack for terrible first impressions- or second first impressions in this case.)

“Clarke,” he says, a note of surprise evident in his tone, “You’re, um, early.” He pulls open the door a bit wider, partly so she could step in to the apartment, but mostly so he could somewhat hide the fact that his t shirt was threadbare and riddled with small holes along the seams and that he has on superman patterned pyjama pants.

She shyly tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. “Yeah, there was zero traffic. I would have called Octavia but I figured she probably wouldn’t pick up.”

Bellamy snorts at that. “Yeah, she won’t be up for another hour or so.”

A slightly uncomfortable silence washes over them. Clarke drops her gaze from him and wrings her hands in front her while he swipes a hand through his hair, jostling his glasses in the process. His eyes land on her suitcase and he laughs a bit sheepishly, hand still attached to the back of his head. “You’re room is down this hall,” he tells her, pointing, “It’s the one on the right. I hope you don’t mind that we have to share the bathroom,” he jerks his head towards the door.

Clarke brushes him off. “That’s fine. I’m pretty accustomed to sharing with people.”

“Right,” he nods, slowly closing the front door. “There’s coffee in the kitchen- straight over there- if you want any. Octavia is bringing over brunch later but if you’re hungry there’s some cereal and toast. Maybe eggs but I’m not sure, I was supposed to go to the grocery this evening-”

“Bellamy,” she cuts him off, grinning slightly despite herself, “You’re rambling.”

He flushes a bit and clears his throat, “Sorry,” he says as he follows her down the hall to his own room. “I’m just going to, um, change, and then I can help you bring up the rest of your stuff?”

“Yes please,” she nods as she pushes the gigantic suitcase inside what’s now her room. “I have two more boxes about this size in my car. And it took me about ten minutes just to get this one out of the trunk.”

He ducks his head to hide his smile. “I’ll be there in a minute,” he says before remembering something. He slips into his room for barely a second and returns with a shiny new key he had cut earlier this week. She catches it easily when he throws it at her, and he smirks a little.

“Welcome to the neighbourhood, Princess,” he drawls, the old nickname easily slipping past his lips. He ducks into his room before she can respond though, and sags against the door, mentally berating himself for doing something so stupid.

Bellamy reaches for his phone first, still charging on his bedside table, and bypasses Octavia’s number in favour of calling Lincoln. When he picks up on the third ring, he skips any formalities and just says, “Clarke’s here.”

He hears the other man’s weary sigh through the speaker. “I’ll go wake up Octavia. I’m almost finished cooking anyway.”

Bellamy doesn’t say anything and riffles through his bureau for clothes to wear. He’s just picked out a pair of black sweatpants and a t shirt when he hears Octavia annoyed sigh right before she says, “What the fuck, Bellamy. I was asleep.”

“Clarke’s here,” he says in response.

The line goes silent for a moment and he almost thinks that his sister has fallen back asleep when he hears her sigh again. “Please don’t tell me you’ve managed to fuck it up already.”

“It’s only been five minutes,” he scoffs.

“So? You only needed five minutes last time too,” and ouch, yeah, he winces a little at that.

“Look, O, I’m a big boy. I know how to behave. It’s just a bit weird since we haven’t talked to each other in two and a half years. So hurry up and get your ass over her to act as a buffer,” he tells her, stripping of his pyjamas and changing into his new set of clothes.

“Yeah, yeah, don’t get your panties in a bunch, big brother, I’m heading into the shower now,” she snaps, still obviously grumpy at being woken up. “Try not fuck it up before I get there.”

Bellamy rolls his eyes even though there’s no one to see him. “Give me some credit, O,” he says as he pulls the shirt over his head, “I’m not completely inept.”

He hears her mumble something incoherent across the line, but she hangs up before he can ask her to repeat, leaving him with a muttered, “Yeah right.”

Somehow he does manage to fuck it up before his sister gets there.

It starts after they bring up the rest of her things from her car and he frowns, because while he knows Clarke always chooses practicality first, three huge boxes don’t seem like nearly enough. When he points this out she just shrugs and says, “I rented a U-Haul to bring the rest of my things.”

He sorts of gapes at her for a moment before replying, “Seriously? You could have fit two other boxes in there. And you could have just asked me to come up with the truck or something.”

“Come on, Bellamy,” she rolls her eyes, “I wasn’t going to ask you to go out of your way and drive up three hours just to help me move my crap.”

“You’re living with me, Princess,” he snorts, “I don’t think anything more would be an inconvenience.”

That’s the wrong thing to say, and he realises this the moment her eyes harden and she sets her jaw. “Right. Thanks for the help, Bellamy, but you should maybe go now. I don’t want to inconvenience you any further.”

He swears, pushing his fringe out of his face. “Fuck, Clarke, come on you know I didn’t mean it like-”

She corrals him out the door and shuts it in his face before he can finish his sentence.

When Octavia shows up with Lincoln in tow a little later, it’s to find Bellamy angrily washing the dishes while Clarke perched on the armrest of the couch on the other side of the apartment, sipping her coffee and scrolling through her phone.

She groans and walks straight over to Bellamy to clout him, ignoring his hiss of pain as she says, “I specifically told you not to fuck it up.”

He doesn’t even get the chance to start explaining because she’s gone as quick as she appeared, wrapping Clarke up in a tight hug that other girl returns just as feverishly. The two of them quickly get lost in their own bubble of conversation, leaving Bellamy and Lincoln to set up everything outdoors on the small patio, even though it’s set for rain, but it’s not like his sister cares. He may or may not roll his eyes a bit more than once.

Brunch goes off without a hitch, and he and Clarke even exchange a few words here and there with Lincoln and Octavia there to diffuse the tension. His sister grills Clarke about how everything’s been since (the ‘since’ was pointed and heavily loaded and Clarke just shot her a wry grin and told her she’d need to be a lot drunker to get through that story) while Lincoln asks her what she has planned so far for her art class (it’s only then that Bellamy learns she’ll be teaching at the high school twenty minutes away.)

When they leave, both he and Clarke are significantly more relaxed and talking once more. Neither of them apologises, but that’s something that they never do. Instead, Clarke helps him pack up the leftovers while he makes a grocery list, and then the two of them manage to go shopping without anymore arguments breaking out in between before coming back home and unpacking the rest of her things which have finally arrived.

* * *

 

Living with Clarke is… not what he expected.

The first week is a bit awkward, and he can’t help but be remind of that time they hooked up in a bathroom stall together at almost every turn, especially when she wanders about in tiny shorts and huge t shirts with her hair all mussed up. It doesn’t take them long to fall into a routine together though, and when they do, each turn brings about a new surprise for him to deal with. Suddenly he’s not living a life of monotony, working during the week and going to bed early on Fridays. Instead he spends time with his new roommate, watching TV, or going out to a bar, or just learning bits and pieces about the other.

For one, she’s not nearly as perfect as he always thought she was.

He learns that she’s vaguely nocturnal, preferring to take a number of short naps instead of actually sleeping for any length of time and likes to do so curled up in whatever warm patch of sunlight she can find, like a cat. Learns that she hates doing the dishes but loves vacuuming an inordinate amount. That whenever they watch something on Netflix together she’s always wrapped in a blanket with her toes poking out, and she always likes pressing her ice cold appendages against him until he relents and takes them in his lap. That she’s more likely to order take out or make him cook because she can never really manage more than basic breakfast foods.

(Which she can do insanely well. She makes them waffles for dinner once and they were so good that they could almost rival Lincoln’s. He doesn’t tell her that though, but judging from the smug smile she fails to repress at the end of it, he’s fairly sure she knows.)

It takes less than a month for traces of her to integrate in to the apartment. He finds some of her books on the shelf in the living room next to his, her expensive as fuck beer in the fridge in between the eggs and smooth peanut butter because she hates the crunchy one an insane amount. His Netflix queue becomes riddled with things that he knows he’s never watched before. Her things are in the bathroom taking up most of the caddy, and the bathroom begins to perpetually smell like the coconut scented body wash she uses.

Not to mention her hair is over everything within a few days.

And he means everything- furniture, the little succulents he has on the window sills, even the clothes in his closet- is bound to have a couple strands of blonde on it. It’s annoying to have to check his clothes each morning and make sure there isn’t any stuck to the back of his shirt, but at the same time it’s strangely endearing, because every time he finds a strand he thinks about Clarke and that funny joke she told him or the way he caught her dancing in her room while painting, and it brings a smile to his face and a slight swoop to his stomach.

(He tries not to read too much into it.)

They still bicker over almost every day though, usually about trivial things like Clarke not replacing the milk when she uses it out, or him not putting back down the toilet seat, but there’s hardly ever any heat behind it.

He learns things about her too. About how her father died and she dropped out of med school. How her mother- whose name was also on the deed for the apartment- threatened to evict her if she didn’t go back to school. She tells him how she used to live with her girlfriend, who tried to support her but eventually bailed because she couldn’t understand how she could still be moping over it after three months, and then how she was left with nowhere and no one except the girl her ex boyfriend cheated on with her, which was slightly sad and pathetic, but she’s adamant that she would probably pick Raven first any day.

She’s mostly drunk when she tells him all of these things and he files it away with the rest of ‘things Clarke Griffin would probably never do sober.’

(Neither of them ever mentions anything about that night to each other, and sometimes Bellamy wonders if it even happened in the first place.)

Honestly, it’s still a little bit startling just how quickly they moved from cohabitation to actually _living_ together, so much so that Octavia loves to tease them about their obvious domesticity. But Clarke laughs too, and he can’t really find it in himself to dwell on it while smiling down at her.

* * *

 

They get closer and closer, especially when the school term starts for her about a month and a half after she’s moved in and she has to adapt to a normal sleep schedule in order to make it to school on time. He teases her about it, even while he places a mug of coffee in front of her blanket wrapped form and sets about preparing a travelled size mug for her too.

The first couple of weeks are brutal, and he always comes home from the museum to find her passed out on the couch in the living room, apparently not even having enough energy to make it back to her room. By now, he’s taken to leaving a spare blanket over the back of the couch and she’s always tangled up in it, dead to the world. It’s- cute.

Honestly, it takes him almost two full months to see what’s going on, and he only does because Clarke decides to fix the bathroom door once and for all.

It’s one of those projects he always set around to do but never actually does, fixing the lock on the door that’s temperamental and won’t lock unless you jiggle it just so. It’s been like that for years and both he and Octavia had just gotten accustom.

Clarke on the other hand hasn’t, and it has lead to some… interesting encounters now that she wakes up the same time as him.

The first time he walked in on her in the shower he doesn’t even notice until sticks her head out to stare at him.

“Bellamy,” she said flatly, watching him as he spits a mouthful of toothpaste into the sink.

“Yeah, Princess?” he mumbled around the brush, still half asleep, and would continue to be half asleep until he had his coffee.

“You do realise I’m in here right?”

He rinsed his mouth before turning around to face her. “Of course I know you’re in- shit.”

It’s only when he saw her- hair wet around her face and regarding him with an unamused expression- did he realise that he could hear the water falling and the room is humid. And that he was standing in nothing but a pair of sweatpants, low on his hips, while Clarke was _naked_ just four feet over with nothing but a flimsy shower curtain separating them-

“I’m just going to go,” he said, voice hoarse, and he scrambled for the door, her laughter trailing behind him.

He hid out in his room, fully awake without even needing coffee and in suddenly uncomfortable pants, until he heard her bedroom door snick shut and then he hightailed it straight to the bathroom, where the smell of coconut still lingered in the air and made the situation in his pants even _harder_ to deal with. He wrenched the tap to cold and then spent the next ten minutes thoroughly disgruntled and unsatisfied.

Bellamy wishes he could say that was the last time it happened.

But instead it happens at least twice a week, and to both of them.

(And he knows he’s not the only one affected, not when Clarke spends more time staring at his chest instead of his face when it happens to her, and especially not after yesterday when she disappeared into her room with a pronounced flush after walking in on him with a towel loose on his hips and glasses on, only to reappear ten minutes later with an even darker flush, spreading down her neck and chest and unable to meet his eyes. He may have smirked a bit too much and sounded a bit too smug when he told her goodbye.)

So now, he comes back home from Octavia’s to find Clarke in a thin, paint stained camisole, cut-off jeans and what looks like one of his flannel shirts thrown over it while wielding a power drill that he doesn’t even know where she found.

He freezes, right there in the hallway, watching her remove the doorknob while humming along to the radio she has on in the kitchen, bopping her head to the beat and his mouth goes dry.

Dear god, he is so _fucked_. This is it. He doesn’t know if ‘wearing his clothes while using power tools and singing to some pop hit’ is too spot on to be a kink but, _fuck_ , this is definitely doing something for him.

She bends over to place the old lock on the ground and all he can seem to focus on is the way her breasts threaten to spill out of the shirt and he must make some kind of sound because then she’s looking up and grinning happily at him, like she hadn’t almost caused him to get a minor heart attack a few seconds ago.

“You’re back!” she says brightly, brushing the hair out of her face. “How’re Octavia and Lincoln?”

He coughs slightly and wills his voice to be even when he speaks. “They’re fine. Invited us to dinner next week. And Octavia says she needs to call you to discuss plans? I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, but there you go,” he says, looking anywhere except at her.

Clarke just hums in response and turns back to her project, rolling up the sleeves of the shirt before setting the new lock in place and- he shuts his eyes, tilting his head back as he tries to reign in his emotions and ignore the electric hum of the drill.

“I’m just going to um,” he starts, coughing again to clear his throat, “I have some work to do.”

She glances over her shoulder at him and frowns. “Are you okay?”

“What? Oh yeah. Yeah, Everything is fine.”

“ _Bellamy_.”

That’s what does him in, the way she says his name, hard and demanding and he really needs to take the time and sit down to figure out exactly what Clarke Griffin does to him, because this cannot be normal. He doesn’t do that, not yet anyway, but instead mutters, ‘fuck it’ under his breath and catches her jaw in his palm.

The kiss is hard and bruising, and she makes a surprised sound against his mouth before dragging him closer with one hand while the other goes up to pull on his hair. He bites her bottom lip, sucking it into his mouth, and when she moans, so low that he feels the vibrations course through him where they’re pressed against each other, he takes advantage of that and licks into her mouth.

The last kiss they shared, when they were both dunk had been sloppy and messy, but this… this was almost as good as the main event for him, the way her skin feels when he slips his hands underneath her camisole, the way she moans into his mouth when he does something she likes, the way she tastes. It’s almost sensory overload and when she pulls hard on his hair, his hips jerk against her and he has to pull away with a swear.

“Fuck,” Clarke breathes, chest heaving up and down. Her cheeks are flushed, pupils blown wide, and her lips are red and swollen and he just wants to kiss her again, maybe slower this time, taking his time to learn everything about her as he steadily causes her to fall apart in his arms. “Fuck,” she says again, this time giggling slightly and carding her hand through his hair, “I’ve sort of wanted to do that since you opened the door for me in your dumb glasses.”

Bellamy looks down at her, eyebrows raised. “Really?”

She nods. “Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I called you after you and Octavia left,” she confesses, cheeks flushing further, and he can’t help but grin at her.

He nudges her jaw with his nose, pressing a quick kiss to it before saying, “Probably this. Or more. Definitely more. Fuck, Princess, I can’t get enough of you.”

The smile she gives him in response is positively feral, the hand grasping the neck of his t shirt pulls him half a step closer and, yep, there he goes again with the thoroughly inappropriate response to things like that. “And now?” she murmurs, lazily tracing his collarbone with a fingernail. When she looks up at him her eyes are half lidded and she’s biting her bottom lip and the hands on her waist tighten.

“Now Princess,” he all but growls, kissing down her neck and heading straight towards her breasts, “Now, it’s certainly not going to be a onetime thing that we don’t talk about.”

They don’t bother going to one of their bedrooms- not when there’s a perfectly good wall right there and they’re both hard up for it and desperate.

He gets her off with his hands first, hard and fast, with his mouth alternating between suckling at her breasts through the thin fabric of her camisole, and muttering all sorts of dirty things in her ear that just has her cries getting higher and higher until she nearly screams.

Bellamy showers her in kisses while she catches her breath and then, in one swift movement she’s pulled him out of his pants and begins to stroke him lightly while he looks around for a condom. They both cry out when he finally gets inside her, and he lets her set the pace with a slow roll of her hips. Clarke catches his lips in a surprisingly soft kiss, accidentally biting him when his hand drops between them to work at her clit, forgoing any pretence of making it last.

When she comes this time it’s with her head tipped back against the wall and Bellamy’s face against her neck as he tells her how beautiful she is.

“All right?” he asks her, not even moving his head from where it dropped to her shoulder. She keeps running her hands up and down his back and he’s genuinely afraid that he might fall asleep.

Clarke presses a kiss to his temple and begins to unwrap her legs from around his waist. “I’m great. You?”

“Fantastic. Nice to know that we’re still good at this,” he says and is rewarded by her tinkling laugh echoing throughout the hallway. “What are the chances that I can maybe pull you away from this project of yours so we can take a nap?”

She bends down to retrieve their clothes, but doesn’t put on anything besides his flannel shirt, smirking when she notices how his eyes darken. Linking their fingers together, she leans in a kisses him, soft and slow like they have all the time in the world, before saying, “I could use a break. Come on, your bed is bigger.”

Bellamy grins like a fool as he trails after her, pausing en route just so he can sneak in another kiss.

* * *

 

Nothing really changes between them after that. They have a pretty solid routine figured out and the only difference is how much they touch each other now. Whenever the watch Netflix she now lies with her head in his lap instead of her feet and he takes to running his fingers through her hair, almost causing her to fall asleep on top of him a number of times. She spends more nights in his bed than her own, stealing his shirts to sleep in as she throws a leg over his hip and snuggles into his side. And they christen nearly every available spot in his apartment, from the table top to the shower.

(Somehow, the lock goes unfixed and neither of them can really be bothered to fix it at this point.)

It’s getting to the point where Clarke is his favourite person to be with, the one he tells everything to, the first thing he sees in the morning and last thing he sees at night. The one that he always gets that funny swoop in his stomach when she smiles at him, or laughs at something he’s said. The one that he can’t help but grin at adoringly when she dances around her bedroom as she works on her latest project.

He doesn’t realise that he’s in love with her until she’s on a field trip to the museum with some of her older students.

He’s the one who shows them around- even though that’s not his job, strictly speaking- explaining the history behind each piece of art the pass while Clarke goes on to explain the impacts of the time period on art, the two of them working in tandem like some sort of tag team. They get lunch together in the small cafe in the museum’s garden and he’s pretty sure her students have figured out the nature of their relationship by now, judging by the not so discreet elbows to the ribs and smirks when he presents her with a cupcake that she makes him share with her. Frankly he doesn’t care, not when he’s gotten to spend the last few hours with one of his favourite people surrounded by both their passions.

It creeps up on him when he walks them back to the bus, keeping her back for a brief moment to give her a quick kiss. When she pulls back and smiles at him before she boards the school bus, it’s there, straight and true in his head, the three little words.

It’s not accompanied by any grand epiphany that has the clouds parting and the birds singing but instead it’s just a mere ‘I love you’ simply playing over in his head, like a broken record that he really doesn’t want to fix.

He tells Octavia though- he always tells Octavia things, even that fateful day when they finally got together, he sent her a blurry selfie of the two of them cuddled in bed with caption ‘so this happened’ and she responded with about three messages with just exclamation marks and heart emojis.

He tells her, but certainly doesn’t expect it when she says, “Of course you’re in love with her. Honestly Bell, Matt Murdock would be able to see how disgustingly in love you two are, and he’s _blind_.” He can practically hear the eye roll across the phone.

“God, you’re such a brat, you know that?”

“Thanks, I was raised by wolves. Now get back to work. The faster you finish, the faster you can get back to your lady love.”

“Bye brat.”

When he gets home, Clarke is already there, making waffles, because they’ve had take out three times for this week already and it was only Thursday. She’s in one of his shirts again and there’s a spot of green paint behind her ears that she missed. The radio is playing something, soft and low, and she’s humming along to it while she slices strawberries, sneaking a piece into her mouth ever so often.

The scene is so perfect that he can’t help it when he blurts out, “I love you.”

She turns around, and the smile that unfurls across her face could put the stars to shame. Bellamy crosses the kitchen in three quick strides, pulling her into his arms and kissing her, soft and slow and unbearable sweet, though still a bit messy because neither of them can stop smiling.

“I love you too,” she says when they’ve pulled back, hands carding through his hair, gentle as ever.

He grins down at her, kissing her again.

(There are I love you’s on their lips, sparking at the slightest bit of contact.)

She pulls him closer, a hand sneaking under his shirt to scratch at the skin there while he mouths down her neck, teeth scratching because he still can’t stop smiling.

(It radiates outwards from his heart to his limbs, filling him with such a lightness that it feels like her lips are the only things anchoring him down to earth.)

He lifts her onto the countertop, haphazardly pushing everything away and her legs hook behind him, pulling him as close as possible.

(Her mouth fizzles like orange soda, and he can taste the joy and happiness coming off it. He suspects it might be the same on him for her too.)

She looks at him and he looks at her, neither of them being able to tear their gaze from the other, even when their cheeks begin to ache from all the smiling.

(She tastes like what home feels like and Bellamy doubts that he’ll ever get enough of it.)

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to join me in [my trashcan](http://hiddenpolkadots.tumblr.com/) if you ever want to yell about these losers


End file.
